


an ending

by MoonCatKris



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-05
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-06 16:00:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8759578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonCatKris/pseuds/MoonCatKris
Summary: Ron and Hermione breakup scene. Based on Starnobella prompt-Heartache. Breakdown. Bowling shoe. “I love you.” “You love a story someone once told you, and gave it my face.” http://starrnobella.tumblr.com/post/154044858390/just-in-time-for-suggestionsunday-tumblr-came





	

**Author's Note:**

> As usual. I own nothing. JKR is the queen of this world, even if we don't always agree with her.

This would likely be the last time she saw him, and he was wearing those ridiculous red and blue muggle bowling shoes. He loved bowling. Well, he loved anything muggle, really. Sometimes it was nice that she could actually do muggle things, but mostly it was irritating. Like his father, he treated all things muggle as if they were a circus act, purely for his entertainment, an amazement that a creature so simple as the muggle could come up with something so interesting. 

That was probably the thing she hated most about wizards as a whole. Even those who didn't care at all about blood status acted as if muggles weren't also human beings, just like them. They could accept that a wizard from a foreign country simply had a different culture, but not muggles. No, by the way most wizards and witches acted, muggles were just very clever animals. 

He had finally met her parents the weekend before and it had been the metaphorical nail in the coffin. She had remained silent while her parents forced polite smiles, and small talk. She ushered him out the door as soon as supper was over, not even letting her mother get the pudding out. He never saw the apologetic grimace she aimed at the brilliant man and woman who had raised her to be the intelligent witch that she was.  
-

“Ron.”

“Hermione! Look how clever this is. The man was just telling me that you can buy your own shoes and bowling ball to take home. He said different balls spin different amounts and that helps you score better. Isn't it amazing? I can't believe they figured that out. He said it was basic physics, whatever that means.”

Hermione rubbed at her forehead, but Ron didn't notice. He had already turned around to throw the ball again. 

“Ronald, please sit down.”

He threw his ball one last time and finally joined her at the table.

“What's up? Is something wrong?”

Hermione really wanted to just laugh hysterically in his face. He had treated her parents like mildly intelligent primates, and he wanted to know if something was wrong. Listening to him talk down to her father has made her want to hex him in anger and sink into the floor in embarrassment simultaneously. 

“This isn't working.”

Ron frowned, clearly puzzled, so she continued without prompting.

“We need to break up.”

His cornflower blue eyes flashed with hurt and for a second she wanted to take the words back. She didn't want to hurt him. He was one of her best friends, or he had been. He probably wouldn't ever speak to her again. Then, she remembered the way that he had smiled indulgently at her father, like an adult listening to a toddler talking nonsense. She expected anger from him. That was his usual response to being hurt, to lash out. She never expected the breakdown that occurred instead. She'd only ever seen him cry in the aftermath of the war, when they buried his brother and many friends. 

“'Mione, please don't do this. I don't understand. Why? I mean, I thought we were happy. I love you.”

The heartache that clutched her chest almost made her gasp for air. She blinked back her tears, because if they fell, he would think she was giving in. She had been thinking about this for a week and she had come to quite a few realisations. She didn't love him, at least, not the way he thought he loved her, and he didn't love her either. 

“No, Ron. You love a story someone once told you, and gave it my face.”

He shook his head hard, in utter denial. Before she could say anything else, he was reaching into his pocket.

“You don't understand. I was going to propose. I was going to ask your father last weekend, but you rushed us out of there.”

Hermione closed her eyes, rubbed her temples, and counted to ten. She didn't want to see the ring he had picked out.

“Don't do this. We can pretend it never happened. I'll ask you to marry me, and we'll get married and get a house. You can work on your creature laws and I'll do a desk job in the DMLE and help George in the shop sometimes. Eventually we'll have a couple kids, the best, smartest redheads ever to go to Hogwarts. Please!”

She turned away from him then. He was good at painting a happy picture but that wasn't the reality of it. She shook her head.

“No, Ron. I would always know that we were only together because it was what everyone in the whole bloody wizarding world expected. We would fight all the time, even more than we do now. You would resent me, because you would never be able to surpass me, and because I refuse to sell my life to the public. I would resent you because you want to be on the front of magazines and because you don't even realise how you act about muggles and muggle things. We would be unhappy and when the children went to Hogwarts I would go stay somewhere else. It would destroy any possibility of saving our friendship. I can't do this.”

Ron's brow was furrowed in confusion. 

“I don't understand.”

She sighed.

“We got together during the final battle. The first months of our relationship was filled with press and funerals. After the funerals were over, we didn't spend any time together because I went to Australia, then straight back to school. By the time we got to spend any time together as a couple, our relationship had been sensationalised. We couldn't go in public without being mobbed. We had no privacy to get to know each other as more than friends. We were the golden couple. Everyone expected us to just have this perfect fairytale relationship. Anyone who knows us should know this isn't possible. We've always been at each others throats. I know you Ron, and as much as you don't want to hear it, you have a complex. You've always been in the shadows. Working a desk job and helping at the shop while I work my way up the Ministry ladder is only going to end in you hating me for the success and fame and press I will get, no matter how much I don't want it. I could probably put up with the way you act about muggle things, acting like they're so amazing, but I cannot deal with you treating muggles like they are just animals who were miraculously clever for figuring out something incredibly simple. My father probably would have thrown you out if you had asked his blessing to marry me last weekend. I don't think you even realise what you do, Ron. You were completely condescending to my parents. You spoke to them like an adult listening to a toddler spouting nonsense and you act like it is just amazing that they can do simple things like cooking and dressing themselves, as if they are just wild animals who shouldn't be able to do it. They are human beings, just like us. Do you look down on Fleur's family just because they are French and do things differently? Because it is no different. It's just a different culture. I don't want to lose your friendship, Ron, but I won't stay in a relationship I don't want just for the sake of it.”

Ron's tears had subsided and, as she originally expected, he was now reacting with anger. The heartache was written across his freckled features as he screamed at her. He was practically incoherent at this point and she knew he was lashing out because of his pain, so she didn't take in the words or try to decipher his ramblings. She just let him yell until he was done. She watched as he practically threw the shoes at the attendant and stormed out. 

It was only after she heard the faint crack of apparition from outside that she let herself break. She sank to the floor and, face in her hands, sobbed. She hadn't realised how long she had been there like that, until the attendant touched her shoulder and, with an apology, informed her that he needed to close up and she had to go. She gathered her bag and Ron's forgotten jacket and left.   
-  
She hurried around the side of the building and apparated straight to the front steps of 12 Grimmauld Place. She only hoped Ron wasn't there. She had barely knocked when the door flung open and Harry was hugging her.

“Hermione! We've been so worried. Ron was here earlier, but you've been gone for ages.”

“Sorry Harry.”

Her response was muffled against his sweater and she pulled back. She offered a sad smile and handed him the jacket. 

“Ron was angry and forgot this.”

Harry accepted it with a silent nod. Hermione had already spoken to him about why she was leaving their best friend, so he thankfully didn't have any questions. Hermione sighed. 

“I'm going home before Gin comes to give me the third degree. Now that it's done, you can tell her what I told you the other day.”

Harry nodded and, after a brief kiss on the cheek, Hermione disapparated again.  
-  
“Hey Crooks, old boy. Looks like it's just the two of us again.”

Hermione patted the fluffy head of her old squash faced cat and thanked Merlin, not for the first time, that Kneazles had exceptionally long lifespans and that he would probably live another 10 years at least. Crookshanks just blinked his giant yellow eyes at her and, once his mistress was curled up on the couch, climbed into her lap.


End file.
